{"id":464141,"date":"2024-08-06T08:03:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T08:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exotel.com\/uae\/blog\/what-is-interactive-voice-response-ivr\/"},"modified":"2024-08-06T08:03:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T08:03:50","slug":"what-is-interactive-voice-response-ivr","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/exotel.com\/uae\/en\/blog\/what-is-interactive-voice-response-ivr\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you have dialed a business number and heard a voice that said “<\/span>Welcome to the company. Please<\/span><\/i> press 1 for support and 2 for sales”<\/span><\/i>  then already know what an IVR is. IVR or Interactive Voice Response has revolutionized voice interactions. Even though it’s a very simple technology, it has found multiple applications in industries like healthcare, mobility, customer support, etc.  <\/span>
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\n<\/span>In this article, we’ll take a deep dive look into IVR, it’s types, advantages and more. The idea here is to clearly understand the technology and its applications in different industries. <\/span><\/p>\n

What is an Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?<\/b><\/h3>\n

First things first, let’s understand what an IVR is.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>In simple terms, an IVR is an automated voice system<\/a> helps in making customer segmentation and routing easier. It enables customers to make a choice through their phone’s keypad. It’s popularly used in support centers and has also found it’s usage in other scenarios like customer feedback.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>Let’s take a scenario of a hotel booking platform and the implementation of IVR for their helpline number. First up, the hotel will probably want to know the language that the customer is most comfortable with. After capturing the language preference, the company checks if the caller is an existing customer or not. <\/span><\/p>\n

In case the customers have a query that can be handled by the system, it can be handled by the IVR system itself. For example, if you would like to cancel their bookings, the registered users can use IVR to directly cancel their bookings. <\/span><\/p>\n

In case the user would like to speak to a customer support agent, they can be connected to the right agent based on their preference. For more information, look at the image below. <\/span>
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How does Interactive Voice Response (IVR) work?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Let’s talk about the technology behind IVR. For this, let’s understand DTMF first. <\/span><\/p>\n

Call Centre DTMF (Dual Tone Multifrequency), also known as touch-tone, is the tone that is produced when you enter numbers on your phone’s keypad. Every key on your phone has a specific frequency attached to it. For example, when you press 1, two tones are generated,  1209 Hz and 697 Hz. In case you want to learn frequencies for other digits too, you can find them <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

So whenever you make an IVR choice on your phone, specific frequencies are passed through the phone line to the IVR system. The frequencies are then translated to determine the key pressed. Depending on the key pressed, different tasks are triggered, be it the next IVR message or call routing. Newer phone systems are usually equipped with automated DTMF encoders. <\/span><\/p>\n

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